Does the Intel Core 2 need fast DDR2 memory to perform at its best? In this article we compare different memory speed and timings to provide you with the answer. Read on to find if cheap memory is enough to feed the Conroe

I've updated the last page with info on the decrease of performance with PC5300 vs PC4200, thanks to Sintel for the clear explanation:

The Core 2 has a front side speed bus (FSB) of 266Mhz x 4 (Quadruple) “1066Mhz”, the ram is running at 266Mhz x2 (Dual Channel) x2 (DDR) = “1066Mhz”, so with PC4200 memory and FSB are running synchronized. When you use PC5300 you are no longer running synchronous with the FSB and a factor of x1.25 has to be used. The older Athlon XP from AMD also displayed this decrease in performance when running memory asynchronous, where memory latency is more important then memory bandwidth; the Core 2 technology is similar in this aspect. With the Pentium 4 the pipe lines were longer and the effect of running asynchronous which increased latency was masked.

By running the memory synchronous to the FSB you have the least amount of latency and thus performance is at its best. Why is PC6400, which is also running asynchronous faster then? Because the memory latency and speed is now that much higher that it compensates for the loss of running asynchronous and overall performance does increase. PC5300 worked great with Pentium 4 but it should be avoided when running Core 2.

if you read through the complete text of the forum post linked above, you'll see that by changing the CPU native FSB and thereby also the north bridge strap, you shift the 1:1 sync from 400 to 533 to 667; but even at 667/1333(FSB) the performance is lower, when running in sync, as the NB is running on higher latency to obtain this speed, thereby decreasing performance.

if you CAN change the NB strap, you can alter the NB strap setting, forcing it to run either slower/faster to give you more headroom for overclocking, but that something for a different article.